To the Beach!
It begins the next day when Shirl heads out to find that perfect café beside the sea, where she can sit with the water lapping at her toes to drink a glass of retsina in the tranquillity of a Greek day.
Well. What can I tell you?
The first beach she comes to transports her both to San Tropez (what with the glitzy cost of it all), and also to hell, what with its regimented lines of wooden sunbeds and parasols. To traverse what was once the seashore, one must have legs as thin as ice lolly sticks as one squeezes sideways through the rows of basking flesh, sagging breasts, and overhanging bellies, all the time trying not to look at anyone, while trying not to breathe in too much of the Hawaiian Tropic and Bvlgari Opera Prima cloud mix, or look in anyway out of place. Which is exactly what Shirl is, and she becomes more so when she double-checks the prices on display: ‘Sunbed €15.00 each, umbrellers, €10.00. Includes a piece of fruit and a wet wipe.’
Shirl moves on.
The second beach she encounters appears, from a distance, to be what she wanted: a small bay, a small café, blue water and… Water Sporties for all the falmalies, no insurance needed.
She moves on.
Third time lucky, they say, and the third beach our Shirl comes to is exactly what she wanted. Quiet, hardly anyone else around, trees for shade and a small, rundown café at one end. Outside, there are round metal tables and uncomfortable wooden chairs, and inside, is a man with an over-enthusiastic moustache and, when he greets her, a remarkably unplaceable accent.
‘Lovely loydy,’ he pours through his facial hair. ‘You have come to my kafeneion. For this, I am, um, delighting.’ He clutches his chest as though she just agreed to donate him a kidney. ‘I am Costas. Pleases, you, er, you take seat. I have best ouzo. Seet, seet.’
‘Costas, can you do me a favour?’
The moustache twitches at this change in the standard script. ‘You want me, um, to do you flavour? Of course!’ All the benevolence in the world oozes from his expression. ‘What can Costas do to make lovely loydy, um, happy?’
Shirl eyes the gentle lapping of the Aegean against the shore and, closer to hand, a table and a solitary uncomfortable chair, and asks if he can put them both beside the sea.
‘You want me to put table and chair by, er, the sea, and this makes lovely loydy very, um, happy?’ Costas asks, with his moustache furrowed in thought.
‘Please?’ Shirl pleads with the coy smile of the hopeful young.
‘No,’ Costas says. ‘This I cannot do.’
‘Oh!’
‘Yes. No. We have the new Beach Low number five-thousand ninety-two which says I am Natura Two-Thousand neetwork. I am of the eighty-percent Natura where I am not permitted the sunbedding. Because of, um, the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), I must not put, er, anything within three meters of the water, so, um, you, loydy, you want me to break the low for your dream? Ah, gamisu, I say. I am not, er, criminal.’
A thought occurs.
‘But, if you want, you come on my brother’s boat tomorrow and I make fudge with you. You have the insurance, yes? Because we can only do this now with insurance and a license, you must buy, er, a license, then you come on my brother’s boat, and I make fudge with you. Yes. This is how it will be.’ Shirley tries beach number four, and there, she finds her place by the sea. It’s a restaurant, within spitting distance of the water, though you’d have to be a good spitter to manage it, but it’s as good as she’s gunna get, and, well, it’s not Spain, is it?
The Taverna
‘Well, I’ll tell you what it’s not,’ says a man at the next table. ‘It’s not Spain, is it?’
‘Oh, Phil, you’re so clever,’ replies his chuckling wife.
Shirl suspects a second honeymoon is taking place, but it’s not doing very well, and the couple are just as unhappy here as they would have been staying there. Wherever there is.
Bolton, probably.
Ignoring their voices, she applies her attention to the menu. Rather, menus, because there are two. One is ‘Al u Card’ and the other is for ‘Turist.’
She begins with the Turist menu, where there is a delightful catalogue of haphazard spelling, including ‘Local Lamp Stew’ and something she can’t fathom, ‘Charcoaled chicken wings ruthlessly rimmed.’ She hardly bats an eyelid at the ‘Diet Cock’ of the drinks section and checks out the Al u Card.
‘You on your holidays, luv?’ The man who’s possibly from Bolton uninvitedly invites himself into her world. ‘I can tell. Can’t I tell, Pet?’
‘He can tell.’
‘Now, I’m not saying I can always get it right, but you’re the colour of a B200, and that says to me… What does that say to me, Pet?’
‘Says you’ve just arrived.’ Pet finds that hilarious.
‘The B200, see, that’s off white. Not like the A346, which first came out in a cream colour and used to be the only milk float used in South Manchester…’
Bolton is close enough, Shirl decides, though sadly, too far away to send him back to.
‘He studies milk floats,’ Pet unnecessarily explains across the gap between tables as though she were sharing the secret of the Epstein Files.
Luckily, their plates arrive, and they become distracted. As does Shirl when she is asked to order. She goes for the Gordon Blue non-rimmed chicken, a Greek Slade and a small jug of retsina. While she waits, she contemplates the sea, holds a discussion with an inanimate object, and is having a lovely solo time when Bolton returns, this time, chewing.
‘You on your own, luv? Just you and the pillar?’
It’s actually a support post, and Shirl knows this because her husband used to work in decking before he was made redundant by non-recyclable materials, but she says nothing.
‘I’m planning some private time with a rock,’ she says to shut him up, and it actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
‘Now, we had some rock that time, didn’t we, Pet?’
‘We did, where was it?’
‘Blackpool. Aye, you can’t beat Blackpool, can you, love? I know it’s not Spain, but we like to do things different now and then. They employed the A270 in Blackpool, now, that’s an interesting story…’
To bring the unwanted conversation to a close, Shirl regards the Al u Card menu, realises its title is Dracula backwards, and compares its listing to what the annoying couple are eating.
‘Enjoying your Uni Shito, are you?’ She smiles sweetly. ‘I’d have gone for it myself, but I’m not good with sea urchin eggs.’
Pet pales.
‘I see you went for the full option.’ Shirly arms herself with the Dracula menu as her guide. ‘Dreams of the Ocean, is the dish’s name,’ she informs them. ‘An enlivening combination of freshly catched uni, which are sea urchin eggs, served with a compote of black garlic and cherimoya beneath a layer of pangrattato, nestled beside a comforting cherimoya slice, and served with matsutake mushromps and topped with shito, which, strangely, is not a spelling error. Enjoy.’
Pet passes out, and Phil, fast fading, follows. ‘There we go,’ Shirl tells her support post. ‘Now it’s just us and an un-rimmed chicken.’
Concludes tomorrow (you will be pleased to know).
